An ancient Chinese proverb says: Life is an echo. What you send out, comes back. When we look for the good things in our lives, we find that love, friendship and kindness are central to what we need to be happy and content individuals.
It has long been said that a friend is one who supports you when you are down and celebrates with you when things are good. All too often we attract “friends” when things are going well, only to find that few can be found when hard times come. Those who are there for both good and bad times are our true friends, and not the casual, “good time” friends that seem to be ever present in life.
I used to know a person who was very unkind. For this purpose I will call him “H”. While he often put forward a friendly face, he talked viciously behind people’s backs and was known for suing people as convenience or situations arose. Because he was very well off and had several of those “good time” friends around him, until things went bad. Because of the economic down turn and a few law suits from some of his “friends”, he lost his business and found himself deep in debt. All of his friends vanished, and even his family wouldn’t have anything to do with him. He managed to work his way out of this hole, but not to any improvement to his personality. The last I had heard, he had lost his home and was living out of an old trailer, happy to blame everyone else for his life rather than look at his own and see how he ended up creating his own fortune.
In looking at his life and how he blamed everyone else for his bad fortunes, I am reminded of a famous quote by Zig Ziggler, “What you see in others, exists in you.”
How then do we find true friends in life? The answer is in that Chinese proverb, we send out to the world what we want to get back in return. If we want kindness and compassion, we send those things out into the world in our attitudes and actions. If we want true friends, then we act as a true friend acts and send the feeling of friendship out into the world. If we want love, we send out love into the world, in our attitudes and our actions. As we send each thing out into the world, the world sends these things back to us. Sometimes we receive these things back immediately, sometimes it takes a bit of time, but in the end, if we always persist, we receive back what we send out, often, many times the value of what we have sent out.
To contrast the story of “H”, a good friend of mine is great at sending out kindness and friendship. She was doing great until the economic downturn and her company was downsized. When she lost her job, she found that her skills were a bit out of date. Several friends pulled together to help her out, helping to provide what she needed to get back on her feet again. A couple years later and she is now back on her feet, in a better position than ever before. She has repaid the kindness her friends showed her many times over, simply because that is the kind of person she is, and continues to show love and kindness to all of her friends.
In the words of Zig Ziggler, “Life is an echo. What you send out, comes back. What you sow, you reap. What you give, you get. What you see in others, exists in you.”
Send out love, hope, kindness and compassion, and find that the world is a better place for you and everyone you meet.
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